INTO THE SLIPSTREAM: GREY by Jon Armstrong

(Science fiction author Bruce Sterling wrote an article in 1987 that defined "Sliptream" as those novels that incorporated elements of genre fiction into literary fiction. In other words, novels that at the time gave a sense of what it felt like to live in the late twentieth century, and could be even more descriptive of daily life now in the 21st. INTO THE SLIPSTREAM will take a look at some of these novels.)

I know this will be difficult, but try to imagine a world where millions of common, everyday people live their lives vicariously by following the fashion trends, the sex lives, and the day-by-day doings of a select group of super glamorous, super wealthy people.

Wait a minute! That's our world. But do not despair, the world Jon Armstrong creates in his debut novel takes all our fascination with celebrity and wealth and cranks it up several notches. (TMZ would seem as sober as C-SPAN in this world.) We are in an unspecified future with society divided between members of the elite, ruled over by families whose aristocratic status is determined by their corporate holdings and the amount of publicity they can generate, and then, down below, well, everybody else. The slubbers. Those who live in the slubs -- the vast wastelands of housing developments and thrown-together shacks visible some twenty feet below the highways were the families travel in luxury conveyances at jet propelled speeds. (Slubs is my favorite neologism of recent science fiction.)

Enter Michael and Nora, dream couple. Michael, once famous as a teenage dancer on programs watched by millions, is scion of the River Group. Nora family is older, possibly more distinguished, but not so loaded. The slubs and really everyone else in the world seem to watch the couple's every move. As the novel opens they are returning from a highly formalized date that took them around the Pacific Rim. Michael and Nora, however, are also rebels of a kind. In a world where you are defined by what fashion magazines you read, Micheel and Nora are dedicated followers of Pure H, a magazine of excruciatingly subtle layouts complemented by enigmatic statements. Devotees of Pure H reject the gaudy flamboyance of the world around them and wear only shades of gray, brown, and a few carefully chosen color accent pieces. It sounds like that want to live in a Calvin Klein shop from the 1980's, but they do go to extreme. Each has chosen to burn out the rods in one eye so that by closing the other they see the world only in shades of gray.

In a way you can't fault Michael and Nora for their revolt into tastefulness. Michael's father epitomizes the vulgarity of this society. His fashion crimes go far beyond mixing stripes and checks. He is always in what would be some ridiculous costume were it not accepted as high fashion by those around him. His mouth is a fountain of enthusiastic obscenities that would give Judd Apatow pause. He has a cameraman in charge of documenting his every move and a hairdresser, with the marvelous name Xavid, who never leaves his side.

This book does have a plot, taken loosely from Romeo and Juliet. As star-crossed lovers Michael and Nora may be rather tedious, but that's part of Armstrong's joke. Their coupling while on the run is left discretely off stage. It is impossible to imagine the two of them involved in anything as squishy as sex.

There are assassination attempts, betrayals, daring escapes, and a Mr. Toad's Wild Ride shortcut over the North Pole. And Michael's estranged mother runs a carnival. She's quite a character.

I can imagine people either loving this book or thinking it is too clever for its own good. I am obviously in the first camp.

(Follow the "slipstream: label for reviews of other slipstream novels,)

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INTO THE SLIPSTREAM: THE SILENT LAND by Graham Joyce

(Science fiction author Bruce Sterling wrote an article in 1987 that defined "Sliptream" as those novels that incorporated elements of genre fiction into literary fiction. In other words, novels that at the time gave a sense of what it felt like to live in the late twentieth century, and could be even more descriptive of daily life now in the 21st. INTO THE SLIPSTREAM will take a look at some of these novels.)

While on a skiing vacation in France, a young London couple, Jack and Zoe Bennett, are caught in an avalanche. Jack, who has made it up a tree, digs Zoe out from under the snow. The event is devastating, and they fear that another avalanche is imminent. It's early morning and they are alone on the mountain. They walk back to the resort and find it deserted. Food remains set out on the kitchen counters, but no one is in sight. This sudden disappearance convinces them that the resort has been evacuated, as has the village, which is similarly deserted. Around this time I thought the point of Joyce's novel was what happens to people when they do not grow up watching the Twilight Zone, because it is not for another fifty pages, and various failed efforts to leave the village, that they confront the fact that they are almost certainly dead.

Joyce has more tricks up his sleeve than that. Some of the scares may be predictable, but they are frequent enough to keep this complex and thoughtful love story linked to the author's background in horror and fantasy. Several customer reviews have complained that Jack and Zoe are too ordinary, but surely that's the point. Their reactions, from experiments in high-end shopping to the guzzling of expensive wines, are exactly what I would expect ordinary people to do while waiting to see what comes after death. Others have accused the love story of sentimentality, and here I strongly disagree. By the final revelations, which, yes, you will probably guess a chapter or so before the end, the depth of the Bennett's love carried me much further into the mournful nature of Joyce's novel than I had expected given what seemed to such a slender premise.

INTO THE SLIPSTREAM: BLUEPRINTS OF THE AFTERLIFE BY RYAN BOUDINOT

(Science fiction author Bruce Sterling wrote an article in 1987 that defined "Sliptream" as those novels that incorporated elements of genre fiction into literary fiction. In other words, novels that at the time gave a sense of what it felt like to live in the late twentieth century, and could be even more descriptive of daily life now in the 21st. INTO THE SLIPSTREAM will take a look at some of these novels.)

Let's imagine that at some point during the 1980's a group known as the Kirkpatrick Academy scoured the country, maybe the world, for the brightest young minds they could find. They then took them to the Academy, which to the ouside world does not appear to exist, and set them to work on whatever projects they found most interesting, And what if their plan for saving the earth involved eliminating 95% of the polulation, the only schism in the group being whether to do it sooner than later.

That's the underlying story of Blueprints of the Afterlife, a novel that takes place well after the FUS --the Era of Fucked Up Shit -- when a largely de-poplulated earth, helped by some truly amazing technology, does not seem to be doing so badly. The scars are there. There has been a devastating war against the newmen, anthropoids, possibly from China, who fight ruthlessly and long. But now they are humanity;s servants. Global warming is still a problem, and retirees in Phoenix have to vacuum seal their homes and head north for the winter. Most cities are decimated, victims of the Melaspina glacier that leaves its home in Alaska and goes on a self-guided tour across North America destroying most major polulation centers. A innovative building project is turning Bainbridge Island off the coast of Seatlte into a carefully reconstructed New York City.

Boudinot's novel is told in many voices. Scattered through the novel are taped, pre-FUS interviews with Luke Piper, a young man who has lived through a middle-class childhood, a late hippie phase, become a dotcom millionaire, and happens to be the best friend of one of the architects of the FUS. Skinner is an aging war veteran who provides accounts of just how bloodthirsty the war against the newmans really was. Abbie slips into the darker side of the new society. The bionet is a technology that can cure everything from the common cold to paralysis, But DJ's use the bionet to highjack personalities, controlling their every move until they get tired of them and put them on autopilot programs that may be either destructive or simply boring.

Boudinot keeps a lot of balls in the air over 400 pqges, and I am not sure if all the story lines reach real conclusions or if he intends for them to, What he can do is keep you entertained with episodes that range fro outrageously funny, to excruciating, to downright creepy. Residents of New York Alki, the name of the project on Bainbridge island, find themselves slipping into the personalities of the dead New Yorkers; whose apartments they take over. (Creepy.) The war veteran Skinner, when he has finally had enough, contacts the bionet and orders "Combat Ready!" Immediately his old head is on a G. I Joe torso. (Funny)

Not the current cover

I've read that this novel fits into the "Slipstream" category of books that employ genre conventions but are not genre books. So despite plot elements involving marauding glaciers, dj's hacking into personalites, mass cloning, and the vacuum-sealing of Phoenix, this is not a science fiction novel. Right. Perhaps its a question of the publisher, in this case Grove Blackcat, and the cover style they choose. Blueprints has a classy blueprint cover and does not show panicked crowds fleeing the glacier Melaspina. Perhaps a mass market edition will have that latter cover.

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